NRC, Assam

In order to wean out cases of illegal migration from Bangladesh and other adjoining areas, NRC updation was carried out under The Citizenship Act, 1955, and according to rules framed in the Assam Accord.

NRC would lead to Humanitarian crisis:

  1. Sordid game of political confrontation across the whole of India’s east and Northeast.
  2. Families separated:
    • Names of some family members have been included in the final draft but those of their wives and children are missing.
    • Leave aside the harassment and humiliation of having to file claims all over again and chase officials who are often less than sympathetic.
  3. Rising insecurity among people leading to violence:
    • Chant of national security and a muscular nationalism could stoke more mistrust and aggravate the climate of uncertainty in the border state.
    • Incidents of harassment on the charge of being illegal Bangladeshi on flimsy ground, or no ground at all, are making the migrants nervous.
  4. Names Are excluded:
    • From the frenetic pace to meet deadlines in the face of an unrelenting apex court to the omission of 1,50,000 names from the 19 million that had made it to the first draft.
    • The latest list again had its share of notable omissions, including serving and former legislators.
  5. Summoning people at very short notice. ( for re-verification ) Authoritarian Terrorism
  6. The future of illegal migrants is under question:
    • Bigger challenges lie ahead, especially after the final NRC list determines the precise number of deemed illegal immigrants.
    • India addresses the fate of those eventually left off the list will ascertain whether its democracy can lay claim to being humane or not.
    • It is doubtful if all indigenous people have their paper in order. For instance, there are doubts that many poor people belonging to nomadic tribal communities would be able to produce documentary evidence that they lived in the state forty seven years ago.
  7. Strain in India-Bangladesh relation:
    • Biggest fallout of the NRC updating could be India’s relations with Bangladesh, which has been on an upswing since 2009.
  8. Rising violence:
    • India and Bangladesh don’t have an agreement to facilitate deportation of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants to that country.
    • This will render the identified illegal migrants as stateless people.

UN experts recently warned that the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam could render millions of citizens stateless and create instability in India. A panel of three experts said the exercise has increased hate speech against minorities in social media and built a climate of racial hatred.

Status of Stateless people:

  • Article 21 of Indian constitution is available to all including foreigners in India.
  • Thus, NRC would be a violation of the constitution.
  • The Supreme Court in Abdul Kuddus v Union of India rejected the petitioners’ arguments, and held that the “opinion” of the Foreigners Tribunal was to be treated as a “quasi-judicial order”, and was therefore final and binding on all parties including upon the preparation of the NRC.
  • In further strengthening the Foreigners Tribunal, the judiciary has failed to fulfil its duty as the last protector of rights

Measures needed:

  • A person’s citizenship is a basic human right.
  • Declaring people foreigners in haste without judicially verifying their credentials can leave many human beings stateless.
  • Under such circumstances, the Tribunal must uphold their fundamental constitutional promises and function with complete independence, without any hint of arbitrariness or discrimination in the adjudication process.

Way forward:

  • India, as a country which follows the ideology of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’, should not be hasty in taking decisions that can disenfranchise her citizens – contradicting its centuries-followed values.
  • The need of the hour is that Union Government should clearly chart out the course of action regarding the fate of excluded people from final NRC data and political parties should refrain from colouring the entire NRC process through electoral prospects that may snowball in to communal violence.
  • There is a need for a robust mechanism of legal support for the four million who have to prove their citizenship to India with their limited means.



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